Woodstock Times

Koschetzki at City Lights

This visionary quality is most clear in his
porcelain dragons. Hardly a form one expects to find
made by a serious artist, or to have any sort of originality or
intensity of expression, even in those countries where the dragon is
part of active folklore, they are based on the sort of ceramic
figures sold in Chinatown. But the specific forms are Koschetzki's own;
indeed they approach abstraction based on dragons. The technique is
highly original and awesome, and the spirituality of the dragon
concept (bird-serpent, spirit of heaven crossed with that of earth,
et al.) is remarkably incarnated. The largest
dragon in the show is a solid hunk
of porcelain weighing perhaps forty pounds. (Porcelain is difficult
to create except in thinnish walls.)

Koschetzki also makes
abstract sculptures of stoneware, far-out arrays of spiral-grooved
long-loaf or cane forms, perhaps phallic (this idea distressed the
artist). They spring off from a solid ball of clay atop massy
rectangular blocks of clay as pedestals are built solid, hollowed
out, fired, repaired at the inevitable cracks, and lined inside with
industrial epoxy.

The exhibit includes a dozen or so
paintings, some up to eight feet high, and two series of
three are among them. They are painted in thinned acrylic by
glazing, a term and technique not elsewhere used with acrylic to my
knowledge. Acrylic is opaque and flat-tish like poster paint, so one
does not expect nor get any kind of translucency (such as is the
purpose of using it with oils); but Koschetzki does get a sort of
emphatic, deep, unequivocally rich color, odd-looking, which accords
with the strangeness of his pictures.

Most of the paintings look pre-planned as
they are line-based with areas of flat color within hard edges—a
design look. The artist does not make preliminary sketches however,
and the pictures evolve greatly during development, which may
proceed for over four months (during which time he meticulously
records hours spent on it). Koschetzki thinks of himself as
communing with his subconscious while he works, and some elements of
his pictures are mysteries to him; for instance, several white
discs in
the sky. (Another instance is "Cool Hope and the
Chaining of
Bullebach," which includes a
subterranean devil-like figure who appeared during the painting
process, and even revealed his name to the painter.)

The most arresting are four paintings which
use his wife as model, a strikingly beautiful
woman with reddish hair, a sweet
smile and a look of cool sensuality. In a triptych, she is cast in
surrealistic allegorical encounters with graphic representations of
what I suppose to be life-force lust, yin/yang interactions,
communing with fantasy beasts in the sky. In another,
"Laurel" we see her suspended nude but for
a diaphanous drape in a lounging pose in mid-air, resembling a more
ethereal countess than Goya was interested in. She is dropping a
rose from her hand.

The exhibit includes a dozen or so
paintings, some up to eight feet high, and two series of
three are among them. They are painted in thinned acrylic by
glazing, a term and technique not elsewhere used with acrylic to my
knowledge. Acrylic is opaque and flat-tish like poster paint, so one
does not expect nor get any kind of translucency (such as is the
purpose of using it with oils); but Koschetzki does get a sort of
emphatic, deep, unequivocally rich color, odd-looking, which accords
with the strangeness of his pictures.

The landscapes in these paintings have
big
skies, where most of the action takes place; in some, complex
repetitive designs of lines (like computer graphics) are painted
(meaning unknown to the artist).

Some
large
plants are revealed with schematic
root systems in the underground emphatic. Several landscapes have
the north profile of
OverlookMountain as a (deliberate)
earthly spiritual anchor.

Koschetzki is interested in paint as a means
of communication, and is seldom indulged for itself, as a liquid
paste which can remember how it was laid out.

A few paintings are more conventional
still-life's or
landscapes . (One shows a goldfish-like
hummingbird-like creature poised before flowers.) But generally
these lack the autobiographical fascination of the more imaginative
scenes with implied narratives. The one which is most involving is
actually autobiographical in origin:

"Our Farm" is a memorial
depiction of several animals the artist loved enough to move from Illinois to Saugerties,
with a little house he built for some of them. Koschetzki is a
visionary artist such as were Blake (but without an explicated
theology), Chagall, Fuseli, Dali (in the allegorical paintings of
his wife). His images have a look of uncontrived, unself-conscious
naiveté or innocence, although they are obviously the work of a
trained and intelligent artist. He "looks into his heart and paints"
(a phrase nowadays invoked only to say that in the modernist period,
so self-consciously intellectual, it's impossible to do.) Anything
suggesting impulses to com-merciality, mode-mongering or
meretricious-ness is absent absolutely. Koschetzki is one of those
quintessential, self-reliant loner/ originators ("pioneers," they
are called in some endeavors) who make their own art and worlds, and
ignore, even if aware of, what other people do or think. More than
in any other culture in history, this is not uncommon in this
country; and ultimately it is a mainspring of the diversity, depth,
self-reliance and dynamic of our arts.

Jürgen Alfred Koschetzki is an inventive
technician, expert in ceramic-kiln building and all aspects of
ceramic arts, and has taught at a half-dozen universities and other
schools.
— Tram Combs
KOSCHETZKI: Painting and sculpture. City Lights Gallery, 5 Rock City Road. August 22-30, 1987
(reception August 22, 4-6 pm). Hours: Noon-9 pm Fri.-Su